76 founded by what they took to be one writer's mad petversity. When I finished, there was a long silence. Finally, Willy: "Gore, this is 'Ben- Hur.' 'Ben-Hur'! 'A tale of the Christ' or whatever that subtitle is. You can't do h " . h ' B H ' " t IS WIt en- ur... Sam's eyes were now shut. "How do you show this . . . uh, love affair?" "By never mentioning it. There won't be a line of dialogue anyone can object to. It will all be in their reactions." I explained how, when Ben-Hur refuses to join Mes- sala in supporting the Roman occupa- tion, one can see in Messala's face that the issue is not politics but thwarted love. Sam was nodding, as if in his sleep. Willy was looking a bit wild-eyed. "Imagine the scene with Messala say- ing something like 'Remember, I asked you,' in such a way that the appeal will register at an unconscious level in most of the audience. They won't really know that this is the love that dare not screech its name, but they will grasp the fact that proud Messala is abasing himself before his old buddy." Willy moaned; stood up; gave me his deaf ear. 'Well, try it. I don't think it's possible, but anything is better than h ' " w at we ve got. The next day I came in with the two scenes. Willy and I read as Sam listened. As we were required to do at M -G- M, no matter who the director was, I had writ- ten in all the "reaction shots"-expres- sions on each actor's face as he hears the other's dialogue. Willy said, ''Tone down the offstage directions. I'll talk to Chuck. You talk to Boyd. But don't you say a word to Chuck or he'll fall apart." The thought of so much wood crashing to the ground committed us all to omertà. I did tell Boyd. The bright-blue eyes glittered happily. Yes, he knew exactly what to do. "I think there's a dog in the scene," he said. "I can be patting it while I'm getting turned down by old Ben." During the reading of the scene, Chuck was imitating Francis X. Bush- man in the silent-film version, tossing his head, chin held high, oblivious of what was going on. Boyd at one point winked at me. He was in character. M- ter the boys left, Sam, Willy, and I said nothing for a long time. We were, to say the least, depressed. Finally, I said, "Chuck hasn't got much charm, has he?" "N 0," said Willy, "and you can direct your ass off and he still won't have any." The scene was duly shot, as written by me. Years later, after I had presented prizes to two writers at the Academy Awards, I ran into Willy backstage. "I loved that cover story on you in Newsweek," he said. "But why don't you " ' B H '''''' ever mentIon en- ur r' "Because I didn't get credit." Willy had appealed to the Writers' Guild that credit be given to ChrIstopher Fry, who had stayed with him all through the shoot- ing, a wretched business. The studio had wanted to shut down the production; then Sam died, and there was nothing but trouble to the end. Christopher reminded Willy that as I had written half or more of the script, I should be credited, too: But the Guild, with its secret arbiters, has always been famous for denying credit to those who actually write the scripts, pre- ferring to assign credit to one of its own. In our case, this proved to be a former president of the Guild, who claimed that he had been mailing Sam pages from Hollywood. As Sam was dead, the Guild told Willy to mind his own business. Fry and I were both eliminated. Backstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Willy and I again discussed the love scene that opens the picture. Willy denied that we had ever discussed-much less made-anything so radical. Over the next few years, whenever we met, we quarrelled amiably over what I had put in the scene and what Stephen Boyd is clearly playing. But, finally, annoyed at Willy's party line, I said, "Let's watch the scene together and I'll show you what's going on up there on the screen." Willy affected not to hear. "Funny about that picture. I was a great favorite of the Cahlers du Cinéma until 'Ben- Hur.' After that, they never mentioned my name again." He gave me his twisted grin, a most ambivalent one, indicating that it might have been my secret sabo- tage that had undone him. I was soothIng. "You did the best you could with what you had." I never knew what he really thought of the picture, which, despite its financial success and numerous prizes, should never have been made. Certamly, I would never have laid claim to any of it had my own union not so exuberantly cheated me. In any case, I was now free of my M-G-M contract. I had also, inadvertently, been reinfected with Roman fever-love of the old city, which otÙy time can cure. I left Rome in May for the Hudson. . PORTFOLIO BY CLAES OLDENBURG STAND UP ARTIST P ART magician and part clown, Claes Oldenburg slips through the nets of contemporary art criti- cism. The consensus that has built up around Lichtenstein, Warhol, Roserquist, and the other American Pop artists has somehow failed to settle the question of Oldenburg's relative standing. His cur- rent travelling retrospective, which opens at the Guggenheim on October 6th, may throw some new light on that, but then again it may not. No artist is harder to pin down than Oldenburg, who since the late nineteen-seventies has operated mostly outside the New York gallery orbit. With his wife and collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen, Oldenburg moves around the world these days, building and install- ing large-scale environmental sculptures of common objects in public place: giant shuttlecocks in Kansas City, a thirty-six- foot pickaxe in Kassel (Germany), a co- lossal Swiss Army knife-boat in Venice- objects that appear to have a widespread appeal even to the sort of people who might be expected to hate them. He has become a popular artist, without compro- mising his own anti -establishment, anti- heroic vision, and that, of course, gives art critics the willies. "I am for an art," as he said back in 1961, "that does some- thing other than sit on its ass in a museum." Everything Oldenburg does starts with drawing. He draws constantly, spontaneously, exuberantly, brilliantly. An Oldenburg drawing catches an Oldenburg thought on the wing, usually in the act of changIng into something else. In his 1969 "Self-Portrait," he pre- sents himself as a divided psyche, wear- ing an ice bag instead of an artist's be- ret, while various Pop object-sculptures chase and merge into each other around his aching head. "Colossal F agend in Park Setting" (1967) is a drawing for a proposed public sculpture in Hyde Park, London; it never got built, for obvi- 0us reasons. Asked to do a poster for a St. Louis music festival, Oldenburg came up with a stentorian "Tongue Cloud" It was rejected, too, but that was in 1975-today, who could resist it? -CALVIN TOMKINS